An essential oil diffuser may be your wonderful new purchase as it comes with many health benefits. Some of the popular benefits of those diffusers are to purify the air, to spread nice scent througout your room and to help treating health problems such as headaches, insomnia and stress. However, it is not simple to name the best enssential oil diffuser since there are various types and each one has different function at different prices.

Before you make your choice, you should be able to answer the following questions: What do you want it for mainly ? How large is the place you are going to use it in? How long do you expect it to be on ? What time of day do you want to use it ?

With your goals determined, let’s check out the two most popular types of essential oil diffuser first:

Nebulizing Diffusers

This type of diffuser uses an atomizer to transform essential oils into microscopic particles which are easy for your body to asorb, inhale and utilize.

*Pros:
-It does not need water or any set-up.
-It releases strong concentration of essential into the air and it may remanin suspended for hours.

*Cons:
– Somehow loud with a humming sound.
– Use oil more quickly.

Suggestions on the market: Models of this type for your selection should have built-in timers like theTeroma Ace. Some even have the auto shut off/on function to prevent over saturation like the Aromatherapy Diffuser and the Aroma-Whisper Essential Oil Atomizing Diffuser 110V US.

The Aroma Ace product

Ultrasonic Diffusers

Also known as humidifying diffusers, they use water and essential oils to create a cool mist to be released into the air. The process is done by a vibration at ultrasonic frequencies to create tiny micro-particles of the liquid (water and essential oils) which are dispersed into the air forming a soft mist.

*Pros:
-Use less oil and are less expensive than nebulizing diffusers.
– Humidifies the air at the same time.
-Quiet or producing a relaxing water trickling sound.

*Cons:
-Only effective in small room.
-Mustbe cleaned occasionally.

Suggestions on the market: Many models of this type come with elegant stylish designs like the SpaRoom Ultramist Aromatherapy Ultrasonic Diffuser and the QUOOZ Lull Ultrasonic Aromatherapy Essential Oil Diffuser. These models are the best in case you want to create a spa-like atmosphere for your room. If you want to use your diffuser as a beautiful night light, you may consider the Essential Wellness Ultrasonic Diffuser or the Smiley Daisy Essential as they come with 7 colors of the led lights which can change periodically.

The Smiley Daisy product

Beside those two main types, there are others to be consider such as evaporatives diffusers(mostly used in mobile car) and heat diffusers. Study about the types thoroughly and make the right choice. The best enssential oil diffuser is the one which suits your needs the most.

Two pre-teen NYC girls think fat is disgusting, yet claim they will never become mentally ill over weight. But present behavior foretells a different ending. Both play games with their food. Chop it into small bites, inspect it minutely for foreign bodies, and try to balance fat calories. They are preoccupied with fat.

Jenna Bao, who is 11 and has thin, layered brown hair she can arrange in 13 different styles, thinks a lot about the food she eats or, more likely, doesn’t. Her friend Patricia Mincone, who is 12 and, as she says, “a dirty blond, definitely boyish,” claims not to ponder food, although she will inspect anything she eats, alert for bugs or smallish rodents.

In this way, these two are like many other preteen girls in their middle-class Queen, New York, neighborhood, or any other town in the United States today: afraid of food. Scared to give in to it. Scared that too much of it will make them something disgusting and unspeakable: fat. While other body issues buzz about their lives — how makeup can only be worn inside the house — nothing is so upsetting, so distracting (from TV, homework, whatever it was Mom just said) as potential fat.

This terror of weight — the fear that one will grow into a teen, grow breasts and hips, and not stop growing — dominates the lives of many American girls.

What’s changed these past few years is that it’s also preoccupying their little sisters. “Over the past ten years or so, the obsession with body weight and shape has become quite exaggerated in the adult population, and so you will see it affect younger and younger kids,” says David Herzog, M.D, executive director of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center and a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. “That’s partly because of the exposure to media and magazines, but also a result of being brought up with diet foods. Twenty-five years ago, everyone drank whole milk. Now it’s got to be a diet soda or skim milk.”

Here in the Bao household, such food fanaticism — the shrinking number of allowable foods, the demand for “diet” everything — is in full swing, not only with Jenna but with her 7-year-old sister, Meagan. Says their mother, Toni, 32, divorced, and the office manager of a private medical practice, “I tried for so long to cook healthy for them. But they eat, like, two things, and I work and I’m having now to keep a lot of things just frozen. microwaved, because it’s too frustrating. This pickiness — and, look, I always watched my weight — but this just gets ridiculous.”

Not that Jenna or pal Patricia or Meagan even remotely approaches being fat. Jenna, tiny for 11, has the solid, packed-in look of a gymnast; Patricia is overtly lanky; Meagan might be described as adorably scrawny. Setting into the living room, a cozy mass of plants and mirrors and framed communion photos, Jenna cuddles into the corner of a sectional couch. Patricia sits so close they are more accurately sitting on top of each other. Meagan kneels at a square marble coffee table, picks up a crayon, and starts to talk about her breakfast. Jenna interrupts. It is she we are “interviewing … my personal body, thank you.” Keeping one hand ready to clamp over her sister’s mouth, the other repeatedly scooping hair behind an ear, she describes “a typical food day … I mean, so you can see I do, like eat.”

She begins, counting off on her fingers. “Okay, like for breakfast, I am not hungry. Even if I’m hungry but, like, really I’m not hungry, what I eat is a Nutri-Grain bar. It’s low-fat” — she has the box out and ready to show me — “and it has good calories. And I have Poland Spring water to flush the system. I eat my main food at lunch.”

From another room, her mother shouts, “Ha!”

Ignoring her, Jenna counts off what she packs for herself: a (very small) bagel with (low-fat) cream cheese. Arizonaa iced tea, and photo chips (low-cholesterol, small bag, she gives most of them away).

We do not quite make it to dinner, because the girls suddenly have a lot to say about eating or, rather, not eating, and the culture and the boys and, as Jenna says, “you know, all that stupid stuff about your waist.”

Patricia explains: “There are girls, and you see them and they are, like, almost anorexias [sic]. Like, there’s this one girl we know…” The two exchange glances to make sure they mean the same girl, “the anorexia” so emaciated she’s called “the bone.” Patricia continues, “So. She’s like, okay, a good friend, and so we did this weird thing — we reported her because she was giving away her food. Like, she’d eat three bites from a cream cheese sandwich, and you could tell she was hungry and she was just saying she wasn’t and starving herself. We told the teacher, who I guessed talked to her, even though she still does it.”

I ask why someone hungry, someone they say is not fat, would give up food.

They are primed to answer, as if they’ve just seen an Oprah segment on the subject. Very rapidly they say: “To be thin. Because of media and ads and, you know, society.”

Kelly Brownell, Ph.D, a professor of psychology at Yale University, tries to expand. “For centuries there has been pressure to look a certain way, because one’s body is a presentation of who you are to the culture. Now it’s to look contoured, perfect. Preteens see the models, they see the advertisements, and they have been around Barbie dolls since they were young. They are bombarded by highly unrealistic ideals.” So are we all, says Dr. Brownell, but the difference is that a 12-year-old “may not understand that the real body is different from the ideal body. It may seem that if you work hard enough, you can look just as you want to.”

The girls, however, are quick to deny that they could be so brainwashed. “No,” says Jenna, “the thing is you want to look good because looking thin and good is what makes you popular. That’s what boys like, and having boys like you makes you popular.”

“But what they like,” says Patricia, “is, you know, not usually what you are.”

What boys like, Jenna says with disgust, are “Pamela Anderson and the Baywatch crew.”

Adds Patricia, “Even if, like, she had it all done, right?”

Patricia sits up and, as if taking an oath, says: “We don’t believe in starving ourselves.” Jenna follows up. “We’ve seen the news shows. We know we have to eat.”

Jenna’s mother passes through and says, sounding a little sarcastic, “I’m really glad to hear that.” Mothers, naturally, take a lot of the heat for the prepubescent diet craze. “What I think,” says Toni, as the girls break for a snack (oatmeal cinnamon bars), “is that it’s the clothing industry, all this making clothes so much tinier all the time that girls are encouraged to dress seductively. They already know this is what boys like.” Opening a bag of potato chips, she says, “I’m vain — I admit it! I sometimes think, yeah, I want to lose a few pounds. But I’m an adult and I can make distinctions. Jenna can’t. She doesn’t understand that her body is still growing, that it’s developing at its own speed. She hasn’t passed through all the changes, but she doesn’t want to accept that. Whatever she says — `Oh, Mom, I know it’s so dumb and fake on TV’ — she wants to look the way they do on TV. Short skirts. Platform shoes this week and shorts, excuse me, with the ass hanging out.”

So, as “silly” and “disgusting” and “fake” as it all is, there is still the inescapable desirability of flat abdomens and tiny thighs. And there are already, at age 11, certain rules.

In public, do not seem hungry even if you desperately are.

Always leave something on your plate.

Never ask for seconds. (“Once, our teacher gave everyone a cookie,” says Patricia, “and there were some left and she said, `Who wants seconds?’ and everyone was afraid to get up. No one wanted to be the hungry one. So finally some guy goes up, then everyone else went and got some.”)

You must read and be seen reading food labels. (Jenna rejects anything beyond 350 calories — an amount she personally chose as “sounding high”; Patricia watches for cholesterol and sodium, fat and sugar.)

Patricia emerges from behind a curtain of hair to explain that she likes food but that she has problems looking down at it. Whatever is on her plate, it seems, she “must inspect every single bit. Because” — and she giggles. The giggles get worse — “because once I had a dream that a mouse came out of my hamburger, and now” — she pauses for air — “I have to take everything apart, no matter what it is, and look at every part, before I can eat it.” This means that her food, when she gets around to eating it, has been unappealingly shredded.

I ask if either one of them is, in her own view, the dreaded F word.

Jenna, her smile wide, says she likes her body and considers it skinny. Except sometimes at gymnastics, or the beach, and there was, um, the Valentine’s dance. “I don’t know how to say it. I just looked … fat.”

We go off to find the “fat” clothes inside her room — a soft, sunny dream world flush with commemorative around-the-world Barbies and fluffy stuffed animals. On a dresser top divided Jenna/Meagan there’s a crowd of perfumes, lipsticks in Arizona iced tea bottles, fake nails, and bowling trophies (team name: The Barbies). Jenna opens a drawer and finds for me the shimmery rayon shirt, then the huggy matching beige skirt she wore that night. “I just looked in the mirror and I thought, Oh my God, I am gross.”

“So tell her what you wore!” shouts Toni loudly from another room.

“I wore a sweater over it.”

And that was okay? Un-fat?

“Well, I just couldn’t look in any mirrors. I mean…” She flops down on her bed. “I mean I just like being a little underweight and I kept remembering the thing that the doctor told me — that now I’m my normal weight for my age instead of, like, two pounds under.”

And so we eat — grilled cheese that Jenna carefully prepares using bright yellow American cheese slices and Wonder bread, cooked very lightly, with low-fat better. It all comes out sort of raw, which was perhaps the point; now they can really stare at their plates and just pick. Jenna lifts her creation with two fingers and makes conscious little bites around its center. She flushes her body with Poland Spring, leaving a nice-sized sandwich square on her plate. Patricia, as promised, opens her sandwich and looks around inside for a very long time. Later, she eats around the crusts on one half, so that her lunch has consisted of about one ounce of American cheese and strips of white bread.

A little more relaxed now, they begin to eat freely in front of me. in fact, they each eat a bag of potato chips. And as they do, the talk slows up too, loses a bit of that rushed, fat-crisis quality. We talk about milk and eggs (are they bad?) and about MTV, which is fun but, more than fun, bad. And the worst, the most disgusting, is House of Style.

“The models?” says Jenna. “They look sick, like they wear that eye shadow both on top of their eyes and on the bottom?” Patricia adds: “They look dead.”

But models still serve as the ultimate myth girls. “Oh, God, the boys just love it! They just love the models,” says Jenna.

At risk of sounding revoltingly grown-up, I ask them who they hold up as role models. “The Spice Girls!” they say together. The Spice Girls — the Monkees, female division, circa now — inspire half an hour of conversation. The group, according to Jenna and Patricia, manage to look “never fat” but not too badly like “a bone.” Each is an individual, a personality who wears what she wants, and because of her true shining personality makes that garment seem really … great. Popular. Thin.

Both girls swear that neither will “go mental” over weight. Yet it’s easy to imagine that in one or two or four years they’ll do just that. Everything is in place: the voodoo games with food, the attempts to “justify” food by naively balancing out calories versus fat, the nitpicky process of taking only small bites that do not add up to a meal. The way that Patricia and Jenna both solemnly ask me if I think they are fat. Next, they ask whether or not I’d lie if I thought they were fat, and whether people in general lie about fat, not to insult. They ask me this three times.

Toni, still slowly fingering a potato chip, says she hopes her youngest won’t end up “so obsessed” and that all this “food craziness” will end sometime soon. Refusing a chip (I did eat all that raw cheese), I say that I doubt it. And then I say that I was nearly late because I’d had to spend time placating my daughter, 6, who did not like her pants. Reason: “They make my legs look different from my real legs and they are disgusting.” Meaning: They made her look fat.

Every girl has food in her mouth and spits up a bit as she giggles. “Well,” says Patricia, making a line of little candies she and Jenna plan to cut in half and then share, “it sounds like she’s way ahead of the game.”

To maintain a healthy lifestyle, people often go to the gym or play outdoor activities in their spare time. When going to the gym, one of the most popular classes is the spinning class. People who practice this type of exercise not only find it easy to do but get the result in a short period of time as well.

In this article, we will give out some advantages and disadvantages of spinning so that you can decide whether it is suitable for you and your partner. Let’s check out!

BENEFITS OF SPINNING WORKOUTS

1. Reduce the risk of taking cardiovascular.

This exercise helps strengthening different parts of the body such as heart, lung and vascular system. As a consequence, the blood is pumped and processed more efficiently in the body. For people who often practice these exercises, they can enhance the endurance to workout in a long period of time.

2. Burn calories effectively.

As usual, one spinning class often lasts for about 45 minutes, even one hour. It does not matter if you go to the gym or workout at home, this workout helps burning from 500 to 700 calories in your body. Therefore, when you put more effort to do this type of activity, you can get the significant result in the future.

On the other hand, people who take spinning classes regularly can have chances to lose more than 2 pounds in just one month without having to cut down their food. However, it is better if you balance between your exercise process and the food diary.

3. Low risk of injury

Like cycling, spinning is the gentle workout which enables the movements of the joints. Besides, there are different parts to protect the body. For example, your upper and lower body are supported by the seat and handlebars so that it is less likely to cause injury for yourself.

DISADVANTAGES OF SPINNING WORKOUT

1. Limit the movements of the upper body.

Spinning workouts are the best choices for strengthening and toning the legs and calves. However, you cannot practice various parts of your upper body such as arms, back and chest. To shape a perfect body, it is good that you apply different exercises for the whole body. Therefore, when taking this spinning class, you should include another form of exercise in order to shape your upper body.

2. Limit the variety.

Doing this basic cycling motion, you are going to repeat this type of exercise day by day. On the other hand, there are a variety of exercises which you can practice to get a healthy body. Some people thrive on this type of exercise; however, others apply a variety of workouts for their practice process.

Don’t worry! Every spinning class also provides you with music to get people become more interesting. Therefore, the time of workout will be more enjoyable and interesting for most learners.

3. Less likely to play outdoor activities.

Spinning workouts are great because you don’t have to worry about the weather. However, you are less likely to spend time playing outdoor sports with friends and family. In addition, you will miss you the Vitamin D from sunlight outside your house. Vitamin D helps strengthening your bones and preventing various health problems.

Although there are some drawbacks to spinning workouts, there are also amazing benefits instead. By spinning regularly, you can strengthen and enhance your stamina and endurance. See more about the benefits of spinning at http://exercisebikesexpert.com/benefits-of-spinning/ . We suggest that you should add more types of exercises to your workout routine. This is not only reduce the sense of bored but also keep you motivated and challenged.

In conclusion, hope that you can decide whether spinning classes are good for you after reading this article. If you are still confused, enroll in a spinning class in a local gym. Moreover, when you begin to like this activity, you can buy one machine so that you can practice comfortably at home whenever you want.

Think of something you really like to do. Is it a game or sport? Maybe it is making a craft, playing a musical instrument, or solving a puzzle. What do all those things have in common? If you said they’re fun, you already know the secret to staying active and interested in fitness!

“Fun is a great motivator, and if you find activities that are fun, you’ll be more likely to participate in them throughout your lifetime. And lifetime activity will make you a healthier, happier person,” says Dick Moss, a sports coach and editor of the newsletter Fun Stuff for PE and the Web site Physical Education Update (www.peupdate.com).

Playtime!

One place where fun is the name of the game is Athletic Playground in Emeryville, Calif. There, kids and adults learn to tumble, do handstands, climb ropes, and more.

Handstands, climbing, and tumbling? You may have done those activities as a little kid. They can be great forms of exercise and a lot of fun too. “We look at what kids like, and we try to apply it also for older kids and adults;’ says Athletic Playground co-owner and founder Shira Yaziv.

Other classes at the gym might be new to you. They include aerial skills, which involve hanging from a trapeze or a special fabric; acro yoga and acrobalance, in which people balance on other people, sometimes while doing yoga moves; and the Afro-Brazilian movement form capoeira, a combination of dance, martial arts moves, and music.

But you don’t need special classes or equipment to get moving in fun ways. “We encourage people outside of classes just to go outside in the park and try things,” Yaziv says. “Learn what amazing things your body can do.”

Learn to Have Fun

If you decide to learn a brand-new sport or activity, it might take some getting used to. That’s OK! Even if you don’t get it the first time and it doesn’t feel like you’re having a great time right away, stick with it.

“Activities are the most fun when you’re good at them, but it’s more difficult to develop the basic skills needed for some sports than for others,” says Moss. “While almost everybody can walk, skateboarding and basketball take more time to master. However, [learning the required skills] can be worth it … because these might be sports you can play for the rest of your lives.”

Look into classes if you aren’t sure where to start, or ask a teacher or a coach for some help. Or join up with a friend and come up with something on your own! “When you look at little kids, they teach themselves how to walk and walk backwards and jump,” says Yaziv. You can too!

“Keep exploring what the body can do,” Yaziv adds. “It just gets boring when you just do the same things over and over again” Remember your playground days when you and your buddies would invent new games and tricks? You’re not too old to make your own fun!

Use Your Noodle

Look at items around your house in a new way. Can you turn something into a new game? In some cases, people have used pool noodles–long tubes of flexible, buoyant foam–for games that don’t involve water at all. Make up your own, or try some at www.noodlegames.net. Other people have made giant versions of the word game Scrabble, with letter tiles made out of floor tiles, to play outside. Can you think of a gamethat’s usually played indoors that you can adapt to play outdoors in an active way?

Out of My Way!

If you see someone climbing over a stone wall, you might not think he or she is exercising. But if the person isn’t running from something or starring in an action film, he or she might be practicing parkour. It’s a form of exercise that involves climbing and jumping over obstacles. In fact, the name comes from a French phrase for a type of obstacle course. A similar sport is free running. The difference is that people doing parkour try to move as efficiently as possible. (That means they try not to waste any energy to get where they are going.) Free runners use jumps, flips, and other fancy moves that might not be seen in parkour. For more about both activities, visit www.americanparkour.com.

Gaming and fitness hardly seem at first glance to go together. Stereotypical garners sit motionless for hours in front of their screens, only their fingers and thumbs twitching across the keyboard or controller. Aren’t they all overweight for lack of physical activity, plus a steady diet of power drinks and junk food?

Yet traditional hobby gamers embraced active games as soon as they became available. Fitness games don’t automatically make all garners fitness freaks, but the community as a whole surely benefits when libraries offer games that promote physical activity.

Wii want to have fun

Wii[TM] Sports comes with the basic game, offering bowling, boxing, tennis, and golf. Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus are the most obvious expansions of the library of games you can purchase. The Wii Fit yoga programs are suited to beginners, and the many other minigames can be silly and fun, like flapping your arms to “fly” from one touchdown point to another.

Balance games are a low-impact way to get in shape. EA[TM] Sports Active and Active 2 present solid workouts, with the latter including a 30-day challenge option. The popular TV show The Biggest Loser has an eponymous game (for Xbox 360 and the Wii) that lets players compete against previous TV show contestants or their own friends.

While Nintendo boasts the greatest variety of active games, the Kinect for Xbox 360 takes things to another level. The games rely on your body as the controller and allow for full-body sports like volleyball or soccer in an indoor video game format. Your Shape Fitness Evolved and Zumba Fitness will get your heart rate up at least as well as the exercise tapes of yore. A game like Dance Central teaches the moves a few steps at a time and works for multiple participants, making it an excellent choice for a library program.

Have a PS3? Sony’s PlayStation[R]Move contains a small library of games designed specifically to require the Move controller. Other games have Move options, including the now-venerable Dance Dance Revolution.

Look for games that allow groups to play or form teams for competition. As with most games, firsthand experience will help you tailor programs for your patrons.

What others are doing

Take ideas from the fitness activities staged by other libraries around the country. Games may be stand-alone events hosted by the library, but the best option is to offer active games as part of a broader initiative, especially if you are doing a series of health and wellness events.

One of my favorite examples is the Young and Restless club sponsored by Dundee Township Public Library, East Dundee, IL. This social networking group gathers professionals in their twenties and thirties for collective activities like Wii workouts for “Sweating in the Stacks.”

For National Gaming Week 2011, Rowan County Public Library, Morehead, KY, presented “Eat and Play the Healthy Way at the Rowan County Public Library.” Saturday’s program supported computer and board games. Then, the library launched a four-week Thursday series on healthy snacks and activities, including Zumba dance. This setting would be ideal to overlap fitness games on consoles as part of the bigger event.

Sound mind, sound body

We’ve known for quite some time that video games challenge the mind–some are specifically designed that way: Brain Age is popular, along with MindFit and Brain Fitness Program. As a large segment of the American population is aging, interest in (and sales of) brain games is increasing.

Bloomingdale Public Library, Bloomingdale, IL, has a great collection of such games for checkout, including Kinect fitness but also Big Brain Academy:Wii Degree. Putting these games to use in a library program is a small but logical step.

What’s less commonly recognized is that challenging the body keeps cognitive processing skills sharp. In one school, test scores jumped when students engaged in outdoor activity. An active video game may serve as a substitute when real exercise bicycles are unavailable or impractical. Even the hard-core gaming community is postingYouTube videos on practical reasons to take physical activity breaks during long game sessions in order to play more effectively against one’s pixilated opponents.

Gaming advocates have been saying all along that just because you’re having fun doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from the experience. It’s a lot easier to discern the benefits when the sole purpose of the game is to get you up and moving, raise your heart rate, and work up a sweat. Bring out your books on healthy cooking and healthy living, and you will do even more to enrich the lives of your customers. Isn’t enrichment one thing libraries do best?

TOO MANY AMERICAN MEN ARE UNHEALTHY AND DON’T KNOW IT. SO WE FOUND THE MOST EXTREME FITNESS NUTS IN THE WORLD–MEN WHO TRAIN HARDER, PUSH FURTHER, STAY STRONGER–AND ASKED FOR THEIR HELP. THE GOOD NEWS IS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AS EXTREME AS THEY ARE. JUST LET SOME OF THEIR INSANITY RUB OFF ON YOU. A LITTLE BIT OF EXTREME GOES A LONG WAY.

The man slaps the heavy basement door and turns around. His fingers leave a smear of perspiration that, when he returns in a few minutes, will be gone, evaporated by the thick, stagnant air of this interior stairwell. Wearing a forty-five-pound weighted vest, his shirt dark with Sweat, Mark Merchant, forty-four, who co-owns m,the gym upstairs, has just run up and down twelve flights of stairs five times–with the vest–and he’s starting back up. Next to the third-floor entrance, a bright-yellow whistle hangs from the handrail, in case he becomes exhausted and needs medical assistance. Merchant passes it, breathing hard but solid. He has five more sets to go. Same as yesterday. For some reason, men are doing stuff like this lately. They’re running–far and hard, up stairwells, in marathons and ultra-marathons, over mountains, across nations, and occasionally under barbed wire. They are swimming and biking, too. Sometimes all three, and sometimes all in one day. Whatever it takes to prove they’re alive. It’s as if all men old enough to have watched Bo Jackson suddenly felt an innate responsibility to make him look like a wuss. A one-dimensional wuss even. The statistics are pretty staggering, and not because they show that we’re becoming a species of elite athletes. Everyday men running at their schlubb3; everyday paces have raised the median overall marathon finish time over the last thirty years by almost forty-five minutes. And when marathons and similar events get boring, we invent new ones, like adventure racing–multi-sport events that combine athletics and navigation. The U. S. Adventure Racing Association, which didn’t even exist until 1998, has gone from sanctioning thirteen races a year to more than four hundred–from a couple hundred participants to what USARA president Troy Farrar vaguely, if unscientifically, estimates at “close to one million.” Even if he’s over estimating by half (and seriously, Troy), that’s still a lot of working stiffs who are suddenly willing to spend their weekend running eight miles, rappelling down a cliff to a river, and then being told to build a raft and cross it.

And then there are the real lunatics. Men like Rodney Cutler, a hair-salon entrepreneur and Esquire’s grooming writer, who recently ran 159 miles in six days–that’s more than a marathon a day, if you’re counting–and then climbed Mount Kilimanjaro (see page 106); like Todd Carmichael (interviewed on page 109), who owns a coffee-roasting business and who in 2008 became the first American to reach the South Pole solo on foot, trekking seven hundred miles in thirty-nine days; and like Merchant, who for some reason has decided to enter something called the Death Race. Although smaller in number than the marathoners and adventure racers, they push not only the limits of their minds and bodies but the limits of what can be considered rational. Or even healthy.

What the hell? Why all the abuse? Because men want to find out if they can, for one thing–they all say that. And there’s a bit of midlife crisis here, too–instead of buying convertibles and trying to look comfortable buying pot again, men are getting outside. But it also has to do with an urge that some of these guys say has always existed deep inside us. As Carmichael puts it, “The American dream started with exploration”–of our environment, our land, and our own personal limits. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all in a numbered singlet. Jack Raglin, a sport psychologist at Indiana University who specializes in exercise and its connection to mental health, says this part is genetic. Extreme athletics, in some form or another, go back to the beginning. Raglin cites for-real scientific research that suggests that exercise is an exploration of an innate hunter-gatherer impulse. It seems that when athletics became about more than just running from dinosaurs, we crafted competitions around it, and that impulse led to crazy stuff like “the grind,” a weeklong indoor-track endurance bike race from the late 1800s that put many contestants in the hospital (and was featured in Esquire in 1937). It later led to a market for body butter.

Blame the fact that we all live in cities. There are no farms to run, no bales of hay to toss, no sheep to round up or whatever. There are few physical requirements to being a man in an urban environment. So men are creating them. And with each mile they run, the greater their need becomes to huff out another. Once a man finishes one race, Raglin says, “it’s like, What’s the next milestone? For some people it becomes sort of like merit badges.”

At some point, for some men, marathon merit badges stop being enough. So they run farther. Ultramarathons up to 150 miles. And they run crazier, entering obstacle-course-style races like the Tough Mudder, a ten-mile competition introduced last year that has participants climbing walls, swimming through mud bogs, and jumping over fire. And if that’s not enough, there’s always the Death Race. Started in 2005 by a former securities trader, the race is designed to frustrate people, hurt people even, and make them quit. Although the Death Race covers only ten miles, it takes twenty-four hours to complete–and that’s if you complete it at all. Of the five hundred people who have attempted the race, only forty-nine have finished.

Raglin says events like these provide men with something that’s missing from their lives: motivation. Unlike humping it to the gym for an hour before work, when you focus on a race like one of these, your accomplishment is immediately quantifiable. You either finish or you don’t. And after you do, hopefully you feel like shit. Otherwise you wouldn’t feel satisfied, the thinking goes. You follow?

I recently spent some time in this world of extremism to see what an average person could take from it. I worked out with Merchant, albeit with a much lighter vest–a vest that I was relieved of in my ninth run up the stairs after having been lapped. (Twice.) And while there’s not a chance that I’ll run the Death Race with him this summer, I did learn that I can get a much more effective workout in less time if I don’t rest between sets or exercises. So there’s a lesson. And late last year, although I didn’t join Rodney Cutler for the six preclimb days of marathons (I had some meetings to attend, and also I’m, you know, sane), I did summit Kilimanjaro with him. (See page 106.) My little affair with mountaineering may be over, but I discovered something that I’m sure will pop up in other parts of my life: how much better accomplishing something can feel when you’ve worked toward it–and hard–for many months. From all of these athletes, the lesson is simple: Find what you think are your limits. Then find new ones. Also, make sure you have a yellow whistle, just in case.

More than 275,000 men ran full marathons, a 26 percent increase over nine years.

Overall, 59percent of all marathon runners are now men.

In 2000, 29,373 runners finished the New York City Marathon (the world’s largest). In 2010, 45,103 finished.

More than thirty new marathons were introduced in 2009 alone.

In six years, the number of USA Triathlon-sanctioned events has more than doubled–from 1,541 to 3,500.

When the U.S. Adventure Racing Association started, in 1998, it sanctioned thirteen races. This year, there will be more than four hundred. Seventy percent of participants are men.

The Death Race–an annual twenty-four-hour adventure race that aims to break athletes physically and mentally–started in 2005 in Vermont with eight participants. This summer, two hundred will attempt it. In the race’s six-year history, only forty-nine people have completed the course–forty-five of them men.

Tough Mudder, a ten-mile obstacle course designed by British Special Forces and held in locations across America, had 15,000 participants across the three events in its inaugural year, 2010. In 2011, it will consist of fourteen events, and 150,000 participants are expected.

Are some of you trying to lose weight but don’t know where to begin? Nowadays, when searching on the Internet, people will find it hard to decide which diet plan is good for them. In this article, we will show you different features to help you consider which one is good for losing weight.

Let’s check out things you need to know before starting your diet plan.

CALCULATING YOUR BMI

BMI stands for the Body Mass Index. There is a BMI chart which based on your height and weight to identify the level of your body. To illustrate, doctors often use this chart to identify whether one person has malnutrition or obesity. There are 5 levels of BMI taken from the World Health Organization include:

Less than 18.5 – Underweight

Between 18.5 and 25 – Healthy weight

Between 25 and 30 – Overweight

Between 30 and 40 – Obese

Over 40 – Very obese and you have high risk of taking health problems.

CONSULTING WITH YOUR DOCTOR

You should have your doctor prepare and give some recommendations on your diet plan. He can show you different solutions to get away from overweight and have a healthy life.

There are some main things that you can do to achieve a healthy lifestyle. In addition, trying to be more active in daily life, eating healthy food and choosing a diet plan are effective methods to solve these problems.

TRY TO BE MORE ACTIVE

Research has shown that doing physical activities regularly helps preventing many health problems such as obesity, heart attack or diabetes. It doesn’t matter whether your goal is to lose weight or to have a healthy lifestyle, doing exercises every day is very necessary and important. For some people who are too busy to spend a period of time for doing exercises, check out some small activities below so that you can practice them whenever you want:

Try to take the stairs instead of using the elevator.

Spend less time watch TV, you can do the housework such as cleaning the floor, washing the dishes or taking care of your small garden.

When going shopping, try to park the car far away from the supermarket. Therefore, you will have to walk to the shop and it is also doing exercise!!

Among these small activities, we suggest that you should spend a large amount of time for working out every day. For instant, one person should do exercises for about 2 hours in order to get a perfect shape. You can practice outside or at home, it depends on you. Moreover, it is great to take a look at some spin bike reviews on the internet and pick up one convenient machine for your practice at home.

EATING HEALTHY FOOD

You should eat healthier meals and snack. Don’t think that just doing a lot exercises will help losing your weight. Eating healthy is very important!

Contain various types of food for the body in every meal. Remember to consume more green products such as vegetables, fruits and drink fruit juice. Drink more water instead of sugary drinks or beer.

HOW TO PICK UP A HEALTHY DIET

Some people want to eat healthy by themselves, others often consider recommendation from online society. It is better if you can find what is good for yourself and stick with it for a lifetime.

You can search on the internet or books in the bookstore and figure out which method suits you the most. There are people and experts who have successful in picking a right diet plan and stick with it.

In conclusion, all recommendations above are things that you should consider for losing weight and staying healthy. You can find out more by searching on the internet or reading from books. Remember to take care of not only your health but the body shape as well.

Find out the difference between sit-ups and curl ups–and what they can do for your abs.

Like most kids, Maegen used to suffer through a few sit-ups each week in gym class. But it was the two hours of dancing she did every afternoon that really convinced her of their importance. The 18-year-old Massachusetts resident is an avid dancer, and she’s learned it’s essential to have a strong “center” in order to execute all her moves more easily. “Strong abdominals mean I can lift, kick, and do backward movements without hurting my back,” she explains. And while she’s noticed that the sit-ups she’s done over the years have “definitely” made her stomach area firmer and flatter, she is also happy to find that her posture has improved. Now, she swears by a daily routine of at least 25.

Maegen is right on target, says B. Don Franks, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Kinesiology Department at the University of Maryland and senior program advisor for the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Dr. Franks offers a clarification, however. “Let’s call them curl ups, not sit-ups,” he says. “Sit-ups imply that you’re raising yourself to a sitting position, and that’s not what you should be doing.”

“If you’re doing curl ups the right way, the benefits are three-fold,” Dr. Franks continues. “First of all, strong abdominals will help you avoid lower-back pain. If you already have a bad back, getting those muscles in shape will relieve it. Secondly, they make you look better by toning your middle.” Dr. Franks stresses that there’s no such thing as “spot reducing,” but if the abdominal muscles are taut, “the whole area is naturally going to look flatter.” Finally, curl ups can improve your posture, as Maegen has found, because strong stomach muscles mean it’s more comfortable to hold your back erect. With weak stomach muscles, on the other hand, you’re more likely to end up with a slight swayback.

What curl ups can’t do is strengthen your heart or help you lose weight. Only a good aerobic workout such as running, basketball, or swimming will do that. However, curl ups should be incorporated into your warm-up before you launch into an all-around aerobic workout. Do them at least five times a week. You can vary your routine by twisting as you raise yourself up, bending your left shoulder toward your right knee, and vice-versa. This strengthens the obliques, the abdominal muscles on either side of your torso.

The secret to making each curl up really count, says Dr. Franks, is to do it slowly. “Each curl up should take about three seconds from beginning to end,” he says. “If you do them faster than that, you’re apt to lose your form and hurt your back. Plus, doing the movement quickly means you won’t work your muscles as intensely.” When raising yourself up, keep your lower back flat on the floor. When you reach the point at which the lower back begins to come up, stop. One trick is to rest your hands lightly on your thighs. As you raise your body, let your hands slide up your legs. When fingertips reach your knees, you’ve gone high enough. At that point, lower yourself back down one vertebra at a time.

And just how many curl ups are enough? Forget what celebrities tell you in the magazines. You don’t need to do 300 every morning, and you don’t need one of those special abdominal roll-up bars. “Thirty a day is the number to strive for,” says Dr. Franks, adding that 30 is the number set by the President’s Council. “Some people like to make it sound harder than it really is. But there’s no health advantage to doing hundreds of them.”

But, as Maegan discovered, there is a lot of value in incorporating curl ups into an exercise routine. It strengthens your abdominal muscles, helps you avoid lower-back pain, improves your posture–and helps you to look good and feel better.

All the Right Moves

As with any exercise, you’ll reap the rewards of curl ups only if you do them correctly. Here’s how to get it right:

Lie on your back, knees bent, and feet apart and flat on the floor. Heels should be approximately 1 foot from the buttocks. Hands can be crossed over your chest, down by your side, or on your thighs. Keep your chin up, neck straight.

Tighten your abdominals and curl yourself up just to the point where your lower back begins to come up off the floor. (Dr. Franks calls this the “sticking point.”) Hold a second, then curl back down slowly. Going past the sticking point will not only stress your lower back, it will force you to work a different set of muscles than those you’re after.

Don’t tuck your feet under a chair or have anyone hold them.

The entire curl up should take about three seconds. If it doesn’t, you’re doing the movement too fast and not getting the maximum benefit. Stop if your back begins to hurt.

Gradually work up to 30 curl ups a day.

Finish with some slow, gentle stretches to make your back more flexible. One good one: Sit on the floor with your legs straight and spread as far out as possible. Reach and stretch slowly to grasp your right toe with both hands and bring your forehead to your right knee. Hold for a second, then sit up and reach to the left toe. Finally, bring legs together, grasp toes, and bring forehead to knees.

Thirty-minute exercise routines are described that are designed to burn off 1,500 calories per week when performed five time per week. Walking, biking, swimming, in-line skating, and golf exercise routines are described.

Busy wife/mother/employee that you are, chances are that exercising doesn’t exactly make it to the top of your priority list — even if you’d love to bum off a few pounds. Join the club. Dozens of recent surveys, including one published in the Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, reveal that time pressure is the number one reason people don’t work out. And as an exercise physiologist and fitness trainer, I regularly hear from my clients how tough it can be to fit in a regular workout routine.

The good news is, no one’s saying you have to spend countless hours at the gym to get in shape and lose weight. What you do need, however, is to be smart about how you exercise. And for busy women. That means knowing how to rev up the calorie bum for activities you may already do, from biking to swimming to just plain walking. You might be surprised to learn. for instance, that there’s a ten-minute power-walking workout that bums as many calories as running (more on that below). Put these clever strategies to work, and all you’ll need is 30 minutes five times a week to burn off 1,500 calories. That means you’ll drop about half a pound a week, without even dieting. Intrigued? Read on.

1. Walking

True, running burns lots of calories quickly. But it can also be tough on your joints and set you up for problems like knee injuries and strained tendons. Enter power-walking. It bums calories like crazy — without being so hard on your body. Mind you, we’re not talking about sedate, stroll-through-the-mall kind of walking, but rather the eat-my-dust kind. “When you walk at speeds so fast that it would be easier to break into a run. your caloric burn increases exponentially:” explains Ray Giannelli, vice president of research and development for Cybex International (a manufacturer of treadmills and other exercise equipment) in Medway, Massachusetts. Exercise physiologists refer to this supersonic walking pace as “the gray zone,” and studies have shown that it offers a calorie burn equal to fast running — up to 133 calories in ten minutes. (A moderate-pace walk, by contrast, burns just 40 calories for a 130-pound woman.)

How to do it? Stand tall, with your shoulders relaxed, your elbows bent slightly more than 90 degrees as you swing them in opposition to your feet. Take short, quick, decisive steps, walking so fast that you have to hold yourself back from breaking into a trot. Power your leg movements from your hips so that your hips and rear move in a slightly exaggerated wiggle.

If power-walking isn’t your thing, you can still rev up your calorie bum by heading for hilly terrain instead of a pancake-flat course and walking at a comfortable pace. Taking on even modest slopes ups your calorie burn by as much as 30 percent (and helps tone your butt — always a plus).

2. Biking

A leisurely 30-minute bike ride bums about 210 calories. Not bad — but working in a little “interval training” can increase the expenditure to 300 calories. The technique involves interspersing fast bursts of energy at all-out speeds with slower bouts. So, to turn your bicycle ride into a calorie-burning tour de force, alternate fast pedaling on an easy (low-resistance) gear for one to two minutes with slower pedaling on a tougher gear for the same mount of time.

3. Swimming

Here, too, you can make use of interval training — and give yourself a total body workout at the same time. Instead of sticking to the basic crawl lap after lap (which emphasizes the shoulders, arms, and back, and burns 500 calories an hour), intersperse the breaststroke and backstroke, each of which burns 600 calories an hour. Not only will you bum more calories but you’ll also work more muscle groups: The breast-stroke tones the chest, shoulders, butt, and legs, while the backstroke firms your shoulders, abs, and arms. Another way to burn more calories when you’re in the water: Consider taking an “aquarobics” class at your local pool or Y. The moves — typically done in waist- to chest-deep water — tone you all over and burn up to 550 calories an hour. (Plus, unlike regular aerobics classes, a pool workout is nonimpact, so it’s easier on your body.) Can’t find (or don’t fancy) a water aerobics class? You can bum about the same number of calories by striding as fast as you can back and forth across the pool in hip- or chest-level water.

4. In-line skating

It’s the fastest-growing sport for women; some 4.3 million now in-line skate, up from 856,000 in 1992 (a rise of over 400 percent). To rev up the calorie burn, rather than just gliding along, follow an imaginary straight line and keep the center of your body aligned with it while leaning over slightly and pushing your legs out to the side (sort of speed-skater style) to power yourself along. When you skate with purpose, you double your bum (ten calories a minute. instead of five) because the larger muscles of your butt and legs get into the act.

5. Golf

In case you haven’t noticed, golf has shed its retiree-in-Florida image to become a popular sport among men and women from their twenties on up. If you’re already a devotee — or are thinking of taking up the game — consider walking the links rather than riding in a cart. Golfers who walk and carry or pull their clubs burn about 280 calories an hour. And that adds up when you consider that you’re walking for three out of the four hours you spend on the course. Note: You may have to play at off hours; some clubs require carts during high-demand times.

A WEEK OF WORKOUTS — AT A GLANCE

When you put these exercise tricks to work, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to bum off 1,500 calories a week. Most of the workouts below take 30 minutes; if you haven’t been exercising for a while and that’s too intense for you, do what you can, increasing workouts by one to two minutes per workout per week until you can do the full half hour comfortably.

* SUNDAY: Grab the kids and go bike riding. Try out the interval training technique, or take on some hilly terrain; you’ll cycle off about 300 calories in 30 minutes.

* MONDAY: The first day of the work week is tough enough without trying to squeeze in a 30-minute workout — so you might want to make this one of your days off . (Or choose your busiest day to skip.)

* TUESDAY: Set your alarm a little earlier and head out for a 20-minute “gray zone” walk. Combined with a five-minute warm-up and cooldown, you’ll burn up to 330 calories.

* WEDNESDAY: Hump day. Let this be the night you do takeout, so you can pop in a 30-minute aerobic exercise video while your husband and kids head out to pick up dinner.

* THURSDAY: If your energy’s sagging, break up your routine into three mini-sessions. In the morning. jump rope for ten minutes (march in place whenever you need a break) to burn about 110 calories, or do ten minutes of “gray zone” walking for a burn of about 130. At lunchtime, take a brisk ten-minute walk, to burn another 50. Come dinner prep time, let your husband make the salad while you grab your kids, pop in a CD, and dance around the living room for ten minutes; you’ll burn 110 calories in the process.

* FRIDAY: Day off.

* SATURDAY: Go for a jog, alternating one minute at a faster pace with one minute at a slower one. Keep it up for 30 minutes and you’ll burn about 320 calories. If jogging strains your joints, try this fast-slow strategy with walking, swimming. or in-line skating.

Simply the most effective (and fastest) moves to firm up whether spot is troubling you.

Whether it’s a saggy bottom, jiggly thighs, flabby tummy, or upper arms that keep waving even after you stop, chances are there’s a trouble spot that plagues you. The solution, according to Ann Marie Miller, fitness training manager for New York Sports Clubs, is to “whittle down your routine to just those exercises that give you the most bang for the buck.”

Typically, says Miller, these supereffective moves are “compound exercises”–meaning that two or more key muscles are called into action at a time. “This works your muscles in a way that produces greater results, faster,” she explains. And, according to Len Kravitz, Ph.D., an exercise researcher at the University of Mississippi, “by involving more muscle groups per movement, you’ll also slightly increase your caloric expenditure, so you can get more from your workout.”

To do the following routine, start with two sets of eight (or, if you can manage it, ten) repetitions of each move that targets your particular trouble spots. Or you can do the full routine, for a total body workout. As you get stronger, try to work up to three sets of 12 to 15 repetitions. Do the exercises every other day (or at least three times a week), and you should see results in six weeks. (Note: Don’t try to speed up the toning process by doing the exercises every day–muscles need a day off in between to repair and regenerate.)

The Top Toners

Best because: You’re using your own body weight as resistance, which forces muscles to work extra hard.

To do it: Stand with feet hip-width apart, arms straight out in front for balance. Keeping weight on heels, slowly bend knees and lower buttocks as if sitting in a chair. As you return to starting position, tighten butt muscles.

Tip: To check if weight is really back on your heels (which lessons knee strain), make sure you can lift your toes off the floor slightly.

Best because: Each leg is worked individually, which overloads the muscles.

To do it: Stand with feet hip-width apart. Step back with right foot, bending both knees (front knee over ankle, back knee below hip). Tighten buttocks as you return to starting position. Repeat, stepping back with left foot.

Tip: Keep upper body still and positioned directly over hips to help maintain balance.

Push-up

What it works: Chest, shoulders, triceps

Best because: The angle of your body (especially if you work up to straight-legged push-ups) provides resistance, making this a very tough move.

To do it: Lie on stomach, hands on floor under shoulders, knees bent, ankles crossed. Keeping body in one straight line from top of head to knees, push up, straightening arms, then lower slowly.

Tip: Keep stomach tight to support back and help keep it straight.

Dip

What it works: Triceps, chest

Best because: It forces the entire tricep into action (unlike a tricep kickback with a dumbbell, which works only one small area of the muscle).

To do it: Sit on chair and place hands on edge, fingers facing your back. Keeping feet flat on the floor, knees over ankles, slide buttocks off chair and slowly lift and lower body using arms only.

Tip: For an advanced version of this move, try doing it with legs extended straight out, so that only heels are on the floor.

Arm Row

What it works: Biceps, upper back, shoulders

Best because: The all-in-one motion works all three muscle groups hard.

To do it: Place left knee and hand on bench or sturdy coffee table. Hold a five-pound weight in right hand; lift until dumbbell reaches hip. Then, switch sides.

Tip: If this starts to feel too easy, challenge your muscles with a heavier weight.

Crunch

What it works: Abs

Best because: The move tones upper and lower part of abs and the obliques (side muscles) all at once.

To do it: Lie on back with feet in the air, ankles crossed, knees slightly bent, hands cradling head. Crunch up, lifting head, shoulders, and tailbone off floor; lower and then lift and twist to the right. Repeat center lift, then lift and twist to the left.

Tip: Focus on bringing pelvis and rib cage together.

FIVE SECRETS TO HELP YOU TONE FASTER

1. TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT.

Rather than doing 20 reps with a three-pound weight, says Ann Marie Miller of New York Sports Clubs, try ten reps with a five- or even eight-pound weight. The idea is to overload the muscle, forcing it to become stronger, faster.

2. BUT TAKE YOUR TIME.

By moving through these exercises slowly, you’ll see results more quickly. When you race through moves, momentum takes over and the muscles don’t really reap the full benefit. (Just try doing a slow-motion push-up and you’ll feel how much harder your muscles are working.)

3. KEEP BREATHING.

You want to exhale on the exertion (as you lift the weight or work the muscle) and inhale on the release. Correct breathing helps you exert yourself harder and, in the case of abdominal crunches, helps you focus on pulling your stomach in to work the muscles more effectively.

4. BURN FAT.

If you want those muscles you’re building to really show, you can’t ignore aerobic activity. That means, for instance, running (or walking or cycling) for a minimum of 30 minutes, three times a week.

5. LOOSEN UP.

Always warm up before (try running in place) and stretch after your workout, each for five minutes. It helps your muscles repair themselves and become stronger more efficiently. R also helps to keep you from being sidelined by injury.